The Devil, by Leo Tolstoy

xv

Eugene spent most of his time by his wife’s bedside, talking to her, reading to her, and what was
hardest of all, enduring without murmur Varvara Alexeevna’s attacks, and even contriving to turn these into jokes.

But he could not stay at home all the time. In the first place his wife sent him away, saying that he would fall ill
if he always remained with her; and secondly the farming was progressing in a way that demanded his presence at every
step. He could not stay at home, but had to be in the fields, in the wood, in the garden, at the thrashing-floor; and
everywhere he was pursued not merely by the thought but by the vivid image of Stepanida, and he only occasionally
forgot her. But that would not have mattered, he could perhaps have mastered his feeling; what was worst of all was
that, whereas he had previously lived for months without seeing her, he now continually came across her. She evidently
understood that he wished to renew relations with her and tried to come in his way. Nothing was said either by him or
by her, and therefore neither he nor she went directly to a rendezvous, but only sought opportunities of meeting.

The most possible place for them to meet was in the forest, where peasant-women went with sacks to collect grass for
their cows. Eugene knew this and therefore went there every day. Every day he told himself that he would not go, and
every day it ended by his making his way to the forest and, on hearing the sound of voices, standing behind the bushes
with sinking heart looking to see if she was there.

Why he wanted to know whether it was she who was there, he did not know. If it had been she and she had been alone,
he would not have gone to her — so he believed — he would have run away; but he wanted to see her.

Once he met her. As he was entering the forest she came out of it with two other women, carrying a heavy sack full
of grass on her back. A little earlier he would perhaps have met her in the forest. Now, with the other women there,
she could not go back to him. But though he realized this impossibility, he stood for a long time behind a hazel bush,
at the risk of attracting the other women’s attention. Of course she did not return, but he stayed there a long time.
and, great heavens, how delightful his imagination made her appear to him! And this not only once, but five or six
times, and each time more intensely. never had she seemed so attractive, and never had he been so completely in her
power.

He felt that he had lost control of himself and had become almost insane. His strictness with himself had not
weakened a jog; on the contrary he saw all the abomination of his desire and even of his action, for his going to the
wood was an action. He knew that he only need come near her anywhere in the dark, and if possible touch her, and he
would yield to his feelings. He knew that it was only shame before people, before her, and no doubt before himself that
restrained him. And he knew too that he had sought conditions in which that shame would not be apparent — darkness or
proximity — in which it would be stifled by animal passion. and therefore he knew that he was a wretched criminal, and
despised and hated himself with all his soul. He hated himself because he still had not surrendered: every day he
prayed God to strengthen him, to save him from perishing; every day he determined that from today onward he would not
take a step to see her, and would forget her. Every day he devised means of delivering himself from this enticement,
and he made use of those means.

But it was all in vain.

One of the means was continual occupation; another was intense physical work and fasting; a third was imagining to
himself the shame that would fall upon him when everybody knew of it — his wife, his mother-in-law, and the folk
around. He did all this and it seemed to him that he was conquering, but midday came — the hour of their former
meetings and the hour when he had met her carrying the grass — and he went to the forest. Thus five days of torment
passed. He only saw her from a distance, and did not once encounter her.